I know I said I would cover the players left on the ballot for next year. But I believe Ron Santo will be up for consideration by the Veteran’s Committee this coming fall. I am sad to think he will finally get in this year after he passed away. He has long been a Hall of Famer in my book.
He was obviously favorably viewed in his time considering he was invited to 9 All-Star games. His defense was also was viewed favorable considering he has 5 Gold Gloves. He even received the 1973 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award for exemplifying Lou’s integrity and character both on and off the field. He was a player that just carried greatness with him. He is currently the 47th best position player occording to fWAR with 79.3. His bWAR is 66.4. Ron Santo has a bWPA of 34.5 with incomplete records. He was in the top 10 for MVP votes 4 times, and in the top 25 for MVP votes 7 times. The Gray Ink score for Sanot was 147 (144 is average for the HOF). Gray Ink rewards players for appearances in the top 10 of different batting statistics.
He could just flat out hit the baseball. The OPS of .826 and OPS+ of 125 speak for themselves. He also went on to hit 342 home runs amd drive in 1331 runs. He finished his career with 2254 hits and scored 1138 times. He played consitenly as well. He needed to to be 8th in games played at 3B, have the 13th most putouts, and the 5th most assists from 3B as well. He had 7 straight years of over a 6 fWAR and 10 straight years over a 4 fWAR. For 13 years he hit 17+ HR, 74+ RBI, 137+ Hits. He did this with only watching his OPS drop below .775 or OPS+ drop below 109 once.
Out of Hall of Fame Thirdbasemen, Ron Santo falls smack in the middle according to bWAR. There are 10 primary 3B in the Hall, Santo falls behind 5:
Mike Schmidt
Eddie Mathews
Wade Boggs
George Brett
Brooks Robinson
These are 5 are the greates alltime players. It is no slight to be listed behind these five players. I think this list shows where Santo belongs in the history of the game. Frank Baker is the sixth best 3B in the Hall of Fame. Here is a graph created on FanGraphs comparing Brooks, Frank, George and Ronnie:
As seen in the above graph, Santo was always better than Frank Baker. He was also better than Brooks Robinson through age 33 and comparable at Age 34.
The second graph shows the bWAR from best to worst seaosns for thes plaeyers.
As is seen here, Santo was always better than Frank Baker except for his 10th best season. Santo’s career also lasted longer. Santo’s 8 best seasons are better than Robinson’s and Brett’s (except for Season 5) with similar seasons for 9.
Looking at similar graphs based on fWAR, Santo’s best season was better than Mike Schmidt’s, Eddie Mathews’ and Wade Boggs’. The top 4 seasons were on par with these 3 (the best 3B in the HOF). It helps that Ronnie started earlier but he had a better cumulative fWAR through age 31 compared to Mike Schmidt. He also had a higher cummulative fWAR than Wade Boggs through age 33 but again he started out earlier.
Please visit FanGraphs for making very cool graphs and Grids:
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